


The Pen and the Sword

by MarnaNightingale



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-17
Updated: 2007-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:57:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarnaNightingale/pseuds/MarnaNightingale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Beta'd by the fabulous and endlessly patient FairestCat, to and for whom I am eternally grateful. Ian Clysdale fixed my HTML - and my supper.</p><p>Written for idea_of_sarcasm</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Pen and the Sword

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the fabulous and endlessly patient FairestCat, to and for whom I am eternally grateful. Ian Clysdale fixed my HTML - and my supper.
> 
> Written for idea_of_sarcasm

 

 

**Anne Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island, to Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario.**

_3 August 1938_

... he went very quickly and quietly at the end; I mourn greatly for myself but not for your father, who lived and died a satisfied man on the whole, and who saw his children and grandchildren happy, strong, brave men and women. He is with Walter and little Joyce, and will keep good company with them until I come.

Never reproach yourself with not having been here; your visit this spring, while he could still go about a little and enjoy you properly, was all he wanted, and he exulted in every moment of it. Your names were on his lips many times in his last few days, always with love and pride.

As to what I shall do ... Jem and Faith and Una and I sat down today and had a talk, and I have decided to remain in the House O' Dreams — and Una is to come and live with me, for much as she loves Jem and Faith and the children she says that she wants a change now that they are all great men and women and away to school or work — though I know what she will not say, that I am really too old now to live so far from town alone. So I will visit Ingleside for a little longer, and we are to go before winter, and Jem and Faith are to stay on here.

Matthew has gone back to Redmond, and Susan to her last year at Queen's; she thinks of being a doctor, and her father encourages her. So we may yet have three generations of Doctors Blythe; Jem said never a word when Matthew chose to teach, but I know he sighed over it a little. It seems a hard life for a woman, but she is set on it, and certainly she is clever enough, though I do wonder how it will be when she marries. She says she will be an old maid, after her namesake, but I know what fifteen is ...

**Dr James Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island to Kenneth Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario.**

_28 August 1939_

... I have not heard the Piper in many years, had almost forgotten his tune, but I hear it now day and night; they have called out the militia, and the news from Europe grows graver every day. I try to keep what I can from Faith, but she is as much a veteran as you or I, and cons the papers as closely. Matthew will be 18 in October. As for myself, well, they will need doctors, and forty-four is not yet so old ...

**Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario, to Faith Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island**

_15 September 1939_

... I have slumped, Faith. Walter came home today in khaki; he is now Lieutenant Walter Ford of the Royal Canadians. I want to be proud of him — I am proud of him — and I hope I said all that was right, but I know he was hurt that I could not smile. I feel I have let him down, but I felt at that moment that I could  not stand on the platform of Union Station and wave another young man off to war. How can it come to this, after all — that there should be another war, over the same weary ground, and that another generation should be consumed in its flames? That Carl should have lost his eye and Walter his life and Jem and Ken and Shirley their boy-hoods for nothing ... I shall be braver by-and-by, I know it. Our women's hearts will rebel and break and heal and go numb, just as they did before, and not one bit of it shall we show our men, for it would only grieve them, and change nothing. Nor should it, but just now I nearly wish it would ...

**Kenneth Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario, to James Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island.**

_30 September, 1939._

... I don't know how to tell her, Jem. Her heart is near to breaking over Walter, though she thinks she keeps it well-hidden; how am I to tell her that the paper has offered me a position in London and I have as good as accepted? I can't bear to stay out of a scrap, never could ... I have told them of my situation and asked for more time to settle my affairs and they have given it to me, but I must go by December or not at all ...

**Faith Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island, to Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario.**

_1 October 1939_

Dear Sister,

If you have slumped, I know not what I have done — Matthew looks forward to his birthday with an unholy glee, and I cannot bear it. At one moment I feel I must scream — at the next that I must weep. He must think his old mother has gone mad, and if he does there is some truth to it. And all the time James is writing letters ... he is determined to get an older doctor to take on his practice here and to get a place as an Army doctor, whether here or in England, and I dare not say he shall not. He is half-a-year short of being too old — if they do not take him now they will not take him at all, but we shall know nothing for sure for months yet.

We shall "take a brace" by-and-by, as you say. I keep as busy as I can; the old Red Cross has started up again, as if it had never been gone, and I find I can knit a sock as handily as ever I could, but the spice of it has gone; if we must have it all again then we must, but the girl who dreamt of heroes and admired a well-turned-out young man in khaki is gone forever, replaced by a woman who knows only grim necessity and endurance.

Mother Anne takes it hard; I wish I had better news to give you of her, but if she is braver than we are she is also frailer; she and Una read over the papers and then thrust them away - she will not speak of the war at all. She had hardly time to recover from the shock of Father Gilbert's death before this came to grieve her, and while she keeps game and cheerful she has lost flesh dreadfully this last year. Come in summer if you can, Rilla; I know she wants you, and I want you as well.

We had a visit from Jims — he got two weeks' leave while the _Fraser_ was in Halifax for refitting, and spared us a day, and glad we were to get it, too — Bertha Milgrave — now Mrs James Anderson — is fated to take after her mother in the matter of war-weddings, it seems — he had no more than six days in the Glen, the trains being what they are, but they had the use of the lighthouse for three of them, as her father and mother before them — he asked me to tell his "Mother Rilla" that he would have given anything to have you at his wedding but could scarcely contrive to get there himself! It was a far more seemly "do" than Miranda and Joe's wedding; Joe was there in fine form, beaming like anything, and the bride wore Mother Anne's veil — when she heard they meant to do it nothing would do but that she should send for Miranda to come and fetch it for Bertha. It was a quiet affair, from home, but it did us all good to see; a bit of hope for the future in a dark hour. Bertha is to stay in the Glen for now, lodgings in Halifax being poor in scope and dear in price.

So life goes on, Dearest Rilla, and we do as well ...

**James Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island, to Ken Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario.**

_19 October, 1939_

... it is to be the new hospital at Montreal. There is no question of sending an old country doctor, whose leg gives him gyp when the wind "sets wrong", to the front, or even making use of him at sea, but they have not rejected me entirely, and with that I must rest content. Matthew is to go into the Highlanders, and that is enough for Faith to bear, so I try to be glad for her sake, but I would a thousand times rather go over again than wait and watch; did we ever think we understood what they suffered, waiting for us? I learn what courage I have from her, now — she has never said a word against Matthew's going, nor yet against mine, but she slipped away to the House of Dreams the night Matthew asked if he might go, once he was abed, and came in late and silent. In the morning her smile was all it had ever been, but her eyes ... there are things we poor men were not meant to pry into, Ken, not even with our best-beloveds; she lets her hair down with Una, I think, but to Matthew and to me she turns a face so bright and brave it breaks my heart. Matthew is fooled by it, at least so far as we were in '15, but I have grown up a little since then. She knits ferociously and bakes everything Matthew likes best and is determined to throw him a birthday party the likes of which this old house has never seen.

I am to live with Carl and we will keep Bachelor's Hall ...

**Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario, to Faith Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island**

_23 October 1939_

Darling Faith,

Well, I have cried myself out and now I have "taken a brace" with a vengeance. And I needed it — Walter is gone, to Valcartier for now and thence to Halifax, and then overseas. And, Faith — Ken is to go as well — the Canadian Press wants him for London. Of course I said he must go. Quite apart from duty, it is a considerable honour to be sent, one he must not pass up. And they need him, Faith — more than I do, if such a thing were possible. So go I said he must, and go he shall, and soon.

Alice is leaving us as well — to take a job in a shop, of all things! It will pay her a good deal more than we can — with the men enlisting they want girls badly and are prepared to pay for them. I can't deny her leaving will make it harder to come next year, but I will do my utmost — if I cannot come I will send Blythe, when school is done for the year.

I had a letter from Shirley in Ottawa — he is training flyers for the RAF. Newfoundlanders, most of them, and he says they come on promisingly...

**Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, to Captain James Blythe, RCAMC, 28 Glengarry Ave, Montreal, Quebec.**

_24 November, 1939_

Halifax

... the weather has turned against us and after leaving Toronto in great haste and missing the chance to travel down to Glen St Mary I am stranded here for I know not how long, writing little pieces about the men about to go overseas, and wondering uneasily if we looked so raw and unfinished ourselves in our day; as they go out the children of Great Britain come in, sent by their parents with who knows what desperation and suffering to be safe from bombs and starvation. I have written to Faith to ask her if she thinks she could take a pair of brothers I ran across on the docks and hope she will; they are such brave little scraps of things, and the pinched look of them comes, I am sure, from more than the voyage and the separation; they are city children, and have always been poor, I think. Ingleside might be the saving of them — and they of it.

I was glad at least to have the chance of a few days with you and Carl; old comrades and old stories, however painful the recollection of them may be, are a comfort at times such as these. I confess my head was not all it ought to have been when I got on the train the next morning, but my soul was all the better for it...

**Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England to Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

DEC 20, 1939  
LONDON

ARRIVED SAFE. WRITING. ALL LOVE. KEN.

**Toronto Star, 5 December 1939**  
 **Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, London**

_... Gas masks have suddenly become part of everyday civilian equipment and everybody is carrying the square cardboard cartons that look as though they might contain a pound of grapes for a sick friend. Bowlegged admirals stump jauntily up Whitehall with their gas masks slung neatly in knapsacks over their shoulders. Last night London was completely blacked out. A few cars crawled through the streets with one headlight out and the other hooded ..._

_Today was a day of unprecedented activity in the air. Squadrons of bombers bustled in all directions and at midday an enormous number of vast planes, to which the knowing pointed as troop-carriers, droned overhead toward an unknown destination that was said by two sections of opinion to be (a) France and (b) Poland. On the ground, motor buses full of troops in bursting good humor tore through the villages, the men waving at the girls and howling "Tipperary" and other ominously dated ditties that everybody has suddenly remembered and found to be as good for a war in 1939 as they were in 1914..._

**Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario to Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England.**

_December 28, 1939_

Darling Kenneth,

My heart stopped when your cable rang through; only for a little, little moment and then when I had hung up I danced down the hallway like a mad thing and swept poor Dickens up from the mat and danced back to the kitchen with him in my arms protesting with all his might; when I let him down he tore upstairs, yowling with righteous indignation, and was not seen again until morning. He was much on his dignity until dinnertime, but forgave me graciously thereafter and settled on the rug to watch me at my sewing.

I will not pretend to you that our Christmas was merry, but it was not so bleak, either; we had your cable to comfort us, and a letter from Walter, sent from Halifax the day he embarked, and Blythe and I were just quiet together, and we decided to be a little extravagant and got Ingleside on the 'phone; half-an-hour, Ken! — but I count it money well-spent, to hear Mother's dear voice, and Una's, and Faith's, and Matthew's, and Susan's... They have taken your two Home Children, and say they are very quiet and shocked still but beginning to take notice a little; Christmas was hard for them, of course. Poor mites, they may have many more Christmases ahead of them before they see home and family again ... Matthew had home leave; he is to go in January.

I miss you desperately already, but am determined that I am done with complaining; if it must all be done again, why then it must, and we shall do it. Blythe talks of going for an Aide with the Red Cross, but she has only one more year after this one before she takes her B.A. and I am determined she shall finish; we must prepare for the peace as well as for the war, and if she leaves now she may not get a place after. For now she is helping organise teas at the Exhibition Grounds for the soldiers training there and there are plans afoot for Victory Gardens on the campus grounds in spring ...

**Captain James Blythe, RCAMC, 28 Glengarry Ave, Montreal, Quebec to Matthew Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island**

_1 January 1940_

... never doubt that I am proud of you, son — proud and glad, that you should be so ready to go — you will do well, I know. Keep your feet as warm and dry as you may, and your self as tidy as might be, and your honour cleanest of all, and for the rest, guard your men and remember that in giving you their faith they put their lives in your hands; whatever befall, that must never be betrayed. They may seem a rough bunch, may even be one, but on a battlefield their belief that "the brass" must know best is their only reed, and they will cling to it and follow you as trustingly as the children of Hamelin followed their Piper...

**Faith Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island, to Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario.**

_3 January 1940_

... I never saw anything so wonderful as your mother, Rilla — did I say she was discouraged? She has taken to young Joe and Fred wonderfully, and she and Una have them with them every week-end. She is writing again, as well — determined to 'do her bit', she wrote to the editor of the _Register_ and is giving them a weekly column on Wartime Economy in the Home, to which Una contributes also, and which the _Enterprise_ is going to carry as well.

Matthew goes next week; Jem sent him a thick letter, which I did not ask to see. Susan is determined to take doctor's training; Canada will need doctors, she says calmly, and the men may not be there. She is so different from what we were — it is all different, and yet so much the same ...

**Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England to Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_28 January 1940_

... a bit of "long-distance" won't be the breaking of us, Rilla-my-Rilla, even if we are keeping me in London and the house in Toronto — you know they are giving me a little more than I had at home — and there is this about rationing, at least — there is so much less to spend the housekeeping on. If it does you good to 'phone Ingleside once in awhile, I think we can stand it.

Your parcel arrived and was received with great joy — soap is hard to come by just now and the powdered lemon warded off a nasty cold. London is grey and bitter; not the honest cold we're used to, but a mean, sneaking chill that creeps beneath your coat and curls about your spine like a snake, biting as it goes. The air is foul with smoke, and the buildings grimed over with centuries of busy life. Her people are a warm and gallant race, however, and that makes up for all.

Nights in the blackout are terrifying — cars whizz past blindly, pedestrians stumble blindly into obstacles and into one another — but when the skies clear and the moon is full, not even the knowledge that our danger increases with every stray moonbeam can entirely still the wonder of London as she must have been in years long past, brooding beneath the stars.

I am settling into the office well, and working all hours — Johnson is a good chief, and proposes to send me to France in early spring, when Miss Arnold returns to London.

Until then I am haring about England seeing the conditions of our boys in training camps (excellent, by and large — inefficiency and lack of imagination are inevitable in a wartime bureaucracy, but the goodwill of the local people can — and does — make up for a good deal!) and writing "local interest" stories about wartime London. It all serves to fill the pages.

Talking of training camps, I have seen Walter and have great hopes that I shall see him often; he is only some forty miles south-west of here, and even in war-time the trains are good ...

**Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario to Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England**

_3 February, 1940_

... I enclose a sweater and three pairs of socks; the socks are of Blythe's manufacture — I believe she turns a heel more neatly after six months' practice than I ever have or shall — the sweater is mine, and ought to be all right — grey to match your eyes, as well as London's moods, and good and thick — fisherman style. Think of my arms around you when you slip it on, and keep warm!

I am fortunate to get much news of you from the _Star_ — your dispatches are run here with great regularity, and we pore over them  almost as eagerly as we do your letters. Do you think France will hold out? The old Ingleside way of plotting out campaigns on the kitchen table has come back to me, and Blythe joins me in it; her geography has come on wonderfully, just as ours did.

**Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England to Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_30 May 1940_

France is brought low, Rilla, betrayed from within and without — it breaks my heart to see her humbled so, but still they fight on — too few men, but brave. It wrung my heart to leave her, but there was nothing for it but to go, so go we did — in fishing boats and ferries and yachts and even tugs, darting in under the guns to where we stood, hip deep in bloody water ... some day I shall tell you more than what you may read in the papers of that long wait, but for now — your pardon, I have no secrets from you, but I cannot write of it yet.

The little fleet yet criss-crosses the Channel, and will do so so long as there are trusting men waiting anxiously for their lights on the beaches of France...

**The Island Register, 1 June 1940**  
 **War Time Economy With Anne Blythe**

_Susan Baker's War Cake_

_Take_  
1 cup corn syrup  
1 cup cold water  
1 teaspoon salt  
1/2 teaspoon cloves  
1 teaspoon nutmeg  
1 tablespoon shortening or bacon grease  
1 teaspoon soda  
2 cups flour  
1/2 teaspoon baking powder 

__

 

_Mix the corn syrup, cold water, salt, cloves, nutmeg in a saucepan over medium high heat. Make sure you stir well to prevent from burning. Cook for three minutes after boiling point. Remove from heat. Add shortening. When cool, add soda dissolved in a little hot water, add flour and baking powder. Stir, pour into greased tube pan. Bake for one hour in hot oven. Place a toothpick into the cake and if it comes out clean, then it is done. Remove from oven and let cool upside down until sides pull away from the pan._

**Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario to Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England.**

_9 June, 1940_

... It is petty of me, shamefully so at such a time, but I positively burn with indignation when I hear Mr Churchill say that Britain "stands alone" — our boys might have a word or two to say to that, and the ANZACS as well! One would think he might recall the Statute of Westminster, even at such a time as this. Still, it was a splendid speech, and in the midst of our despair it braced us up nicely. We rejoiced that Chamberlain was out and he in; terrible as these days have been, they might have been far worse ...

The campus is a positive ocean of vegetable plots and Blythe's hands are as raw as steak from cutting potato sets; mine, I confess, are not much better, though I had the sense to put on gloves. Yes, we took up the lawn and three of the flower beds — I am determined that whatever may befall, the roses we brought from PEI shall not be ripped out, but as for the rest, it caused me a pang, but I divert myself thinking that that will show Mr Churchill and planning what we shall do by way of flowers when the war is ended.

The papers tell us that Walter's regiment has been ordered to France — I need not tell you with what emotions we await news of their success...

**Lieutenant Walter Ford, Royal Canadians, Dover, England to Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_23 June 1940_

... The English were driven out and the French nearly exhausted, so they sent the Canadians to see what we could make of it all. Very little, and that little not good, I fear — we could get no toehold at all, nor yet make contact with the French, so at length we were ordered to withdraw to wait a better chance. I wish I knew when such a chance might come; there is no denying that things look black for Europe, and none too rosy for England, but I believe that there is such a power of resistance to evil here as will never give in ...

**James Kitchener Anderson, late of HMCS Fraser, to Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_3 July, 1940_

Halifax

Mother Rilla,

I am safe and sound, tho' rather battered in body and spirit; we lost forty-five men, including our Second, and _Calcutta_ lost nineteen, and Cdr. Bourchier is to face a court-martial for the loss of the ships — it was the _Fraser_ that was in the lead, and so he is responsible, tho' a better Captain I should be hard-put to name. I am to go to the new ship as Third, as soon as she is bought into the service and manned; for the moment I have unexpectedly generous leave and can get down to the Glen to see Bertha and the Ingleside folk, and may even manage Toronto when Bertha becomes weary of my ugly phiz — do you think you might put me up for a week?

**Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario, to Faith Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island**

_20 August 1940_

... We have had Jims here for a glorious five days, and have just seen him off at the station — I can scarce believe even now that this great tall sunburnt sea-dog is my war-baby — and he tells me that Bertha will present him with a baby of his own before the winter! I felt every day of my age, Faith ... he has fixed everything about the house that  could be fixed by polishing, rope, or carpentry, and enchanted Blythe and I with stories 'round the fire every evening.

I asked him how he could bear to leave Bertha a day before he must, and he said, very seriously, "She urged me to come; she knows how I wanted to see you, and that the Glen can be sure of seeing me now and again so long as I am on the Halifax run, but when a chance like this might come again there's no telling." It did my heart good to see him, and to see him so grown up — since he went into the navy in '32, you know, we have never managed to be in the Glen at the same time but once.

He has got another ship, formerly HMS _Diana_ , now HMCS _Margaree_ ...

**Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England to Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_18 September 1940_

... you see I have got free of the frying pan and landed myself neatly in the fire! The Huns have been battering the city every night — they got Marble Arch Station last night, and 20 souls with it.

Rilla, it breaks my heart to see so proud a city so beleaguered, and yet the spirit of them is wonderful. They are determined not to be beaten, and I do not think they shall be — not such people as this. Our most junior typist came in late this morning, full of apologies — they had been bombed out in the night, fortunately without loss of life, and she had spent her night and morning rescuing what valuables survived and getting her family settled. After which she washed her face and hands and coolly set out to walk six miles to work, and despite our urgings, at work she would stay until the day's work was done. I doubt not we shall see her tomorrow, yawning and pale but resolute as ever, and bang to her hour.

Got up to Aldershot for an afternoon with Walter — he is well and has been made a Captain. He is frustrated at the regiment's enforced stay in England, consigned to endless training when they might be "up and doing with a will", but keeps his spirits up. He has a girl, one of the WRENS on station at Portsmouth — he met her on leave a month or so back; nothing serious as yet but she seems a fine lass, trim of figure and clever of wit — if they were to become serious I would not be displeased ...

**Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario to Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England.**

_12 November 1940_

... Faith writes that they have got better news of Jims — he is in Greenwich, and likely to be so for some time — his lungs were badly burnt by the fuel-slick and he was half-dead from cold when they pulled him from the water but he will live and is to have a DSM for little Gilbert Churchill to play with — but his sailing days are done.

If you or Walter can get leisure to visit him I know he will want to see you.

**Toronto Star, 30 December 1940**  
 **Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, London**

_It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire._

_They came just after dark, and somehow you could sense from the quick, bitter firing of the guns that there was to be no monkey business this night._

_..._

_You have all seen big fires, but I doubt if you have ever seen the whole horizon of a city lined with great fires - scores of them, perhaps hundreds._

_There was something inspiring just in the awful savagery of it._

_The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen's valor, only to break out again later._

_..._

_The greatest of all the fires was directly in front of us. Flames seemed to whip hundreds of feet into the air. Pinkish-white smoke ballooned upward in a great cloud, and out of this cloud there gradually took shape - so faintly at first that we weren't sure we saw correctly - the gigantic dome of St. Paul's Cathedral._

_St. Paul's was surrounded by fire, but it came through. It stood there in its enormous proportions - growing slowly clearer and clearer, the way objects take shape at dawn. It was like a picture of some miraculous figure that appears before peace-hungry soldiers on a battlefield._

_..._

_The thing I shall always remember above all the other things in my life is the monstrous loveliness of that one single view of London on a holiday night - London stabbed with great fires, shaken by explosions, its dark regions along the Thames sparkling with the pin points of white-hot bombs, all of it roofed over with a ceiling of pink that held bursting shells, balloons, flares and the grind of vicious engines. And in yourself the excitement and anticipation and wonder in your soul that this could be happening at all._

_These things all went together to make the most hateful, most beautiful single scene I have ever known..._

**Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario to Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England**

_24 June, 1941_

... my darling Kenneth, are you sitting down? Your quiet little wife is, for the first time in all her days, bringing home a salary! I make twenty dollars a week, and work hard for it, too.

I am now an employee of De Havilland. They have put on a third shift and wanted workers in a hurry, and Alice put me in the way of a job there. So now I am a machinist, and like it very well, better than serving behind Carter Flagg's counter — or will like it, if I can ever accustom myself to the constant racket. I take the night hours, which I don't like, but it frees up the women with children at home to work the days, and Blythe makes us a breakfast and has it waiting when I stagger home; when I get up I see about some supper, and have it ready when she returns from school...

**Captain James Blythe, RCAMC, 28 Glengarry Ave, Montreal, Quebec to Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England**

_2 July 1941_

... so you see that I would a hundred times rather be a soldier than this, no, a thousand times — but it is what I am best fitted for now, and the Lord knows we are needed — if I could get a dozen more doctors I could keep every one of them busy from dawn 'til dusk.

Dominion Day was a sad affair with no fireworks and the streets bare by full dark ...

**Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England to Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_10 July, 1941_

... It will take some getting used to, I don't deny it — my wife, the factory hand — but I am sure you make a fine one — and twenty dollars a week! When I get home I shall be a gentleman of leisure and live on my wife's earnings ...

**Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England to Captain James Blythe, RCAMC, 28 Glengarry Ave, Montreal, Quebec**

_25 July 1941_

You may have my share of fireworks and welcome in future — we have had a generous plenty of them here of late, tho' for now the skies are blessedly quiet...

Matthew got leave for several days in Town, before the shift to the training camp in Scotland and was good enough to look up his old uncle and suffer himself to be taken for as good a supper as London can afford right now — better than rations, at least!

**Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario to Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England**

_19 September, 1941_

... we are very pleased with our Victory Garden; all we need for winter and enough over that we took several basketsful down to the Red Cross for distribution to the wives and children who are in tenements and can't get or grow enough to keep them through the cold months.

To celebrate their success the University held a dance; Blythe persuaded me to come along as chaperon, tho' I danced a stately waltz or two with a bearded professor from Vienna, a Jew who came here with his wife and children in '35, when things began to look dark for those of his faith in Europe. His brother is there yet, if he lives ... Ken, we must win this war! The alternative is unbearable...

**Captain James Blythe, RCAMC, 28 Glengarry Ave, Montreal, Quebec to Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England**

_12 December 1941_

... the Americans are in it now — and with a will! I'd begun to conclude we would have to make the best of matters without them. The price they have paid for their hesitation is a terrible one; their rage and determination now they are in we may expect to see in proportion to their injury ...

**James Kitchener Anderson, late of HMCS Margaree, to Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_2 February 1942_

... I don't deny it's hard to sit home and watch and know I can't have any hand in events now, but there it is; the doctors all agree I ought to do well enough for civilian life, but pass me fit they will not. I hope by spring to be well enough to take a boat out at least; there are all too few fishermen left here and if I can't fight I will "do my bit" by helping to feed those who can.

Young Gilbert is a delight, and he and Bertha do much to reconcile me to a quiet life; he is nearly standing already and babbles a few words...

**Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario, to Faith Blythe, Ingleside, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island**

_4 March 1942_

... the bride wore her uniform, and the groom his, and Ken says both were equally handsome. Ken says Maria is determined to remain in England, though marriage means an end to the WRENS, and do what she may with the Home Guard, though she wrote me very nicely, enclosing a rose from her flowers that she had saved out and pressed for me, and says that when she can come home with Walter, knowing England safe, she will come with a will ...

**Captain Matthew Blythe, PEI Highlanders, to Captain James Blythe, RCAMC, 28 Glengarry Ave, Montreal, Quebec**

Aldershot, England

_8 March 1942_

... Back in England and in fine fettle, tho' as always frustrated with this everlasting training; at least I hope they are training us for some great matter!

Walter is married, as you have doubtless heard, and extremely pleased with himself — as you could doubtless guess. Your own son has had no such good fortune, I fear; plenty of lovely girls about — I mean the sort a man might want to introduce to his mother — most of them very willing to pass the time of day, and several I like very well as chums, but I remain heart-whole and fancy-free as yet ...

**Una Meredith, House of Dreams, Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island to Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_21 April, 1942_

Our Home Children go on very well; Joe may well be head of his class this year and Fred has grown sturdy and strong on a strict regimen of excellent food and as much time outdoors as he likes. They have found their feet in Glen St Mary society and will be much missed when they are able to return home. Mother Anne dotes on them, as do I — you know, Rilla, that I had put aside all thoughts of children and marriage long ago, but it has pleased the Lord to grant me this gift after all, and I find I have a knack for it.

Mother Anne is recovering well; it was only pleurisy after all, not pneumonia, though she gave us a few sleepless nights. She is still weak, but never missed a column, and has begun to plan the garden — and I do not know where he took the idea, unless it was from Bruce, with whom he is a great favourite, but that blessed Joe brought her a double armful of mayflowers this afternoon, and made her smile and cry at once ...

**Captain Walter Ford, Royal Canadians, Dover, England to Rilla Ford, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_19 August 1942_

Mother, Blythe —

Forgive my scrawl — I write you from a troop-carrier in the Channel, with my paper on my knee and in the intermittent light of a torch which I have tucked between my shoulder and cheek.

In a few hours we shall be in France — we have waited long and (on the whole) patiently for this day, and I can scarcely believe it is here. We thought it had come last month, but at the last moment we were turned back. It may happen again tonight, but I have a presentiment that it will not.

I saw Father last week - we got a bit of leave with our orders — and felt dreadful at the thought that I could tell him almost nothing. It is a terrible thing, sometimes, to have a newspaperman in the family — but in the event he knew all about it. He is on another of these ships, and will see it all first hand.

We are to take and hold the town of Dieppe to establish a beach-head from which the liberation of France can begin — it will take all we have and a good deal of luck besides, but I know the quality of the men we have and am confident we can do it...

**Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England to Captain James Blythe, RCAMC, 28 Glengarry Ave, Montreal, Quebec**

_19 August 1942_

... Matthew is asleep not ten yards from me; I envy him his calm. I find myself going over all I know of the plans in my head over and over, searching for flaws — perhaps it is just that I know I will take no active part in whatever is to happen. If courage and skill can do the job it will be done, but you know as well as I do how little they can count for when fortune turns against you.

Walter seems very near to me tonight — I see him in Matthew's face, and in my own son's eyes — and in the unknown faces around me as well. I choose to believe it is a sign for good — he fell, but we took Courcelette and held it, against odds that seemed as impossible as this expedition tonight — but I am human enough to hope not to pay such a price again ...

**Toronto Star, 19 August 1942**  
 **Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, London**

_...For eight hours, under intense Nazi fire from dawn into a sweltering afternoon, I watched Canadian troops fight the blazing, bloody battle of Dieppe. I saw them go through the biggest of the war's raiding operations in wild scenes that crowded helter skelter one upon another in crazy sequence. There was a furious attack by German E-boats while the Canadians moved in on Dieppe's beaches, landing by dawn's half-light. When the Canadian battalions stormed through the flashing inferno of Nazi defences, belching guns of huge tanks rolling into the fight, I spent the grimmest 20 minutes of my life with one unit when a rain of German machine-gun fire wounded half the men in our boat and only a miracle saved us from annihilation..._

**Captain Walter Ford, Royal Canadians, to Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

London

_25 August, 1942_

... as I said in my cable, Dad is hurt but will recover — his shoulder may not get right again for some time, but he was never in serious danger of dying. I am told he even insisted on filing his story before he would suffer himself to be carried off to hospital!

Matthew's case was more serious, but the doctors are quite cheerful about him now; they saved the leg and think it will get all right again with time and care.

As for myself, I was considerably cut about and bruised in the retreat, and was two days nearly deaf from the guns, but there's no real harm done; a crease across my scalp from a ricochet, but nothing to matter. Likely it saved my life, as had I not been knocked cold by it I would never have been taken off in the first — and only — boatload to get clear before the Germans moved in.

The loss of so many men is terrible to think of — scarcely a handful remain of the Regiment, and what is to become of the prisoners we know not...

**Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England to Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario**

_2 September 1942_

... it was a day Canada will never forget — and nor will I. A disaster from beginning to end — the Germans knew all about us, that much was plain from the moment we landed — or tried to land. They cut us down like wheat under a scythe, and we were powerless to prevent them — powerless, in the end, even to retreat in good order. A thousand men killed - two thousand captured — and nothing to show for it.

Nothing unless, perhaps, a renewed anger and determination be something. That, the survivors of that hideous landing have in full measure, and will carry with them until they see France — and all of Europe — free of this hideous defacement. Even as men wept for their fallen comrades, they were speaking of the next time. There will be a next time, Rilla-my-Rilla, and a time after that, if need be, and if there be any justice or rightness left in the world, when the day of victory comes the Canadians will be there.

**Rilla Blythe, 201 Crawford Street, Toronto, Ontario to Kenneth Ford, Canadian Press, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, London, England**

18 September 1942

... of course you must stay, if you are needed; you know how badly I want you home, but more than that, even, I want this evil wiped from the face of the earth, and if Kenneth Ford staying in London, sending back news to Canada, and Rilla Ford working in Toronto, growing vegetables and making aeroplanes and hoeing potatoes, can bring the day of victory one half-day nearer between us — and I believe that we can, and will — then you must stay in London, and I in Toronto, and there's an end to it.

All my love,  
Rilla.

 

 

 

 

 **Notes** :

The articles attributed to Kenneth Ford were in fact written by novelist Mollie Panter-Downes (1939), the great war correspondent Ernie Pyle (1940), and Ross Munro of the Canadian Press (1941). I have redated Ms Panter-Downes' article, which in fact appeared in _The New Yorker_ in September of 1939, for my own narrative convenience.

Very few Canadian Regiments were at full strength in the early days of WWII, which led to a number of them being combined in the battle order, sometimes more than once — for example, much of the PEI force was deployed with the Nova Scotia Highlanders, who were then more-or-less subsumed into the (Canadian) Black Watch. To avoid a cluttered story, I have avoided references to this fact, but those who wish to know more about Canadians at Dieppe will want to keep it in mind.

 


End file.
